In adult life, the same skills are used as in children’s play: following the rules, negotiating, winning and losing with dignity.
School of Communication
The most obvious benefit of the game is in its apparent uselessness. They play not because they “have to”, but because they want to. Meanwhile, the first remedy for stress and depression is to do something that brings pleasure. Learning to play means learning to get positive energy from life.
Positive playful emotions color the first dialogues between parents and toddlers. The funny faces you make that he laughs at tell him, “We have a connection. We have fun together.” Holding your child under your arms and rocking him back and forth teaches him to trust you: “I won’t let you fall. I am strong enough to take care of you.” The game of peek-a-boo, where you hide your face behind your hands and then reveal it again, is the first experience of separation from your mother: your baby learns that even if you don’t see her for a while, she will soon appear.
Play is a real school of communication with peers. When a child pulls a shovel from the hands of another child, the task of his mother is to say that it is impossible to take it away by force, it is necessary to ask or offer something in return. The task of another mom – to explain to the child, clinging to his shovel, that it is taken not for good, and if he does not allow to play with his toys, no one will share with him too. But to clarify that the decision to give or not to give, take it. This is how they get an idea of private property and for the first time face the choice: to have a spatula or a friend?
It is important to empathize with playmates. If someone is bumped and cries, you can ask the child to take pity on the crying person: let him play with his toy, give him a flower, etc.
Making friends is also a science. Here is a boy of about six years old comes up to the guys playing ball, and, folding his arms on his chest, shouts: “Take me. I’ll beat everybody!” Alas, no one reacts to him. The attempt to get acquainted would be more successful if the boy did not boast and had a friendly look – did not hide his palms, smiled, looked into the eyes (this is called an open pose). And it is necessary to ask permission to join the game from one – the one who gives the impression of the main and the most friendly, who has time to communicate with players and pay attention to what is happening around (“Wait, let the bicycle pass”, “Careful, the ball!”, etc.). The ability to immediately identify and agree with the leader is already the basics of the high art of understanding and persuading people.
Solving problems with playfulness
Sometimes play becomes the only language in which parents can tell children how to solve a problem. For example, no one has ever managed to scratch the baby out of the shell of shyness with the instruction “be brave”. The theatrical play with dolls is another matter. “I’m Katusha. I’m sitting in class and I’m afraid I’ll be called out. And you’re the teacher. What are you doing?” — says the mother, holding up one doll and holding out another to her daughter, who is afraid to answer in class. The girl hesitates, then says, “I’m the mean teacher. I will definitely call you out. Read us the whole story.” “Can I read not the whole story today, but just two sentences, and then a paragraph more tomorrow?” — gives a model of behavior for a shy little girl, Mom. “Well, read as much as you can,” agrees Katya the teacher graciously. The child realized that it is possible to become braver by small steps – sentence by sentence.
Playing with adults can be a solution to many behavioral problems, even for teenagers. If a grown-up child is aggressive, has no friends, refuses to communicate with you, offer him or her a game. It is desirable that these are games without competition. For example, a game of robot who has to make a sandwich with two hands in ten minutes. The problem is that one hand is dad’s and the other is mom’s. A child stands between the parents, who holds their hands and tells them what operations they should perform with their free hands. Once you have learned to make sandwiches, you can clean the apartment, etc. Week after week of regular training, you will soon learn to listen to and understand each other, set a goal together and achieve it.
For children who have difficulty finding a common language with their peers, psychologists suggest games for social intelligence. The rules are the same as in any board game with chips: you throw the dice, make a certain number of moves. Only getting on this or that cell, you need to correctly perform one of the tasks prepared in advance. If you do it, you get two points. If you don’t answer, you miss a turn. It can be a request to give a compliment, to end an optimistic sentence with a bad beginning (“It’s raining this morning…” — “but we can all play together at home”), to show how to start a conversation with a stranger, etc.
Frightening rituals and innocent warfare.
By listening to the language of play, parents can hear the alarm signals that the child is giving. Anxiety that the child does not realize or is afraid to say. Frequent games of children, where they undress themselves or undress their dolls, lead to suspicion that the child has become a victim or witness of sexual harassment. By the way, the same role-playing games can be used to prevent such situations, showing the child how to behave in such cases.
Children often relive episodes that shocked them in play. A child who faced the death of a loved one, but who was not allowed to participate in the ritual of farewell (and it exists for a reason), can persistently “play” in death, making his dolls sick. It is necessary to join his game and try together to perform all the actions provided by the rite over the dolls: to cry, to bury them. He will soon forget about the sad game after he has got over his grief.
Parents may be alarmed by “too mathematical” games, for example, when a child stacks a tower of seven red and five blue cubes day after day. Invite him to change the rules or start a new game. Does your child stubbornly refuse to change the rules? This may indicate psychological problems or a form of autism.
Sometimes parents observing children’s play become anxious when there is no reason to be. Two of the most common false alarms are children playing with imaginary friends and aggressive play. We hasten to reassure loving parents: it is absolutely normal for a pre-school child to make imaginary friends. Girls prefer virtual friends, and boys – animal friends.
As for aggressive games, they must be distinguished from aggressive behavior. At all times, boys played war games, and girls, who are stricter, who are softer, punished and reprimanded their dolls. War games of “white” and “red” were replaced by the fight with aliens, but the essence remains the same: children get the idea that the good must be fought for. It is another matter if conditional shots at the opponent turn into real blows, or the child shows cruelty, not justified by the course of the game. Needless cruelty is a signal that the child has problems in communication with peers: either he is aggressive himself, or he has to endure violence from stronger children.
In any case, in cases where the child’s play has acquired the features of a strange, in your opinion, ritual, is not moderately aggressive or has a sexual nature, it is best to consult a psychologist. And in order not to run the problem to the point where it becomes a threat to the peace of your family, learn the language of the game and listen carefully to the child who speaks it.
Shutterstock/FOTODOM UKRAINE photos were used
